5 Ways Mobile Technology Will Affect The ATM

This fall, the industry will see its first-ever conference on the subject of ATM and mobile convergence when the ATM & Mobile Executive Summit takes place in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 25-26. The event will be co-hosted by the Electronic Funds Transfer Association and sister publications ATM Marketplace and Mobile Payments Today.

There’s never been anything like this conference. Because until now, there’s never been anything like the ATM industry’s intensifying interest and lengthening list of questions about the subject of mobile-ATM interplay:

“Where is the trend going?”

“What mobile/ATM technologies and business models are working now?”

“How are customers reacting?”

“What about the response of regulators and lawmakers?”

The ATM & Mobile Executive Summit will answer these and other questions with help from highly placed experts, including representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Secret Service, the U.S. Treasury and C-level representatives from companies now making early inroads into the mobile financial segment.

Additional information about speakers, agenda and registration are available at the summit website. For a limited time, attendees who register with the discount code WESTER will receive a discounted price of $850 — $700 off the standard price of $1,550.

In advance of the summit, the sponsoring publications have produced a white paper, “Embracing Mobile at the ATM: Five ways mobile technology will change ATMs,” that addresses some of the basics of mobile and ATM convergence. Following is an excerpt from the paper.

Despite the proliferation of e-commerce and mobile banking, cash remains a significant factor for consumers. Given the growth of cash-accepting ATMs, the industry is poised at the center of channel convergence in the mobile era.

The channel strategies are developing to take full advantage of interactivity between consumer-owned devices and ATMs, the leading self-service channel. ATMs and mobile digital commerce can leverage technology to improve the customer experience. ATMs can cost-effectively provide the link between the digital world and the physical world, where consumers still need to access currency.

Financial institutions look at mobile devices as just another channel for consumer services, in addition to the branch, internet, phone and ATM. FIs are typically not concerned with ATMs as a standalone revenue stream. The same is true for mobile banking. It’s a service that an FI must offer to compete in today’s marketplace.

That’s why banks are taking the lead in converging ATM and mobile channels, as they have with adopting video banking that marries personal and self-service technology, according to David Albertazzi, senior analyst with the Boston-based Aite Group.

“Ultimately banks are looking to combine channels to make it easier for the customers,” Albertazzi said.

But those in the independent ATM deployer space may face a tougher road in a mobile-dominant future.

“With IAD ATMs, the transactions that can be performed are more narrow; they don’t have the bells and whistles like the banks do to offer customers,” Albertazzi said.

“The challenges for IADs will be greater. They need to come up with better ways to integrate mobile within their offerings.” The explosion of mobile device use and the burgeoning mobile payments scene may leave some wondering if there’s a need for a simple cash-dispensing device when more transactions are shifting to the digital form.

For financial institutions, shifting delivery of some services to mobile devices could cut operational costs, according to Alan Goode, an analyst with Basingstoke, England-based Juniper Research.

In a report “Mobile — The ATM in your pocket,” Goode wrote, “Data from the U.S. is already pointing to the fact that there is a slow down in the physical ATM market and it won’t be changed by the deployment of intelligent mobile ATM solutions that allow mobile users to get statements, make payments and even top-up mobile prepaid via their mobile phones.

“For IADs, it’s easier to take a wait-and-see approach to new technology. It’s not enough to simply have the latest cool thing.”

Once there’s a way you can make money by turning a mobile application or a mobile transaction into a revenue stream, they’re all for it,” said James Phillips, vice president of sales and marketing for Triton Inc., a Long Beach, Miss.-based ATM manufacturer.

Although it might seem obvious that the growth of mobile payments would result in a drop in cash use, the opposite is true, according to Tom Harper, president of the ATM Industry Association and publisher of ATMmarketplace.com and MobilePaymentsToday.com.

“In our research we’ve found that cash use is actually growing in the United States and around the world,” Harper said. “And it’s not just growing, but growing at an increasing rate. Just a few years ago it was increasing at 3 to 4 percent. Last year it increased 6 percent. And with mobile payments exploding, it’s almost counterintuitive.”

In fact, the Consumer Payments Research Center study, “Survey of Consumer Payment Choice,” shows that cash is still the most familiar and frequently used payment type. Although cash transaction amounts have gotten smaller over time, the frequency of cash use and the average amount of cash in use are rising in the U.S. population overall.

Research from the Federal Reserve Bank found that cash makes up nearly 29 percent of consumer transactions. Overall, U.S. consumers use $1.2 trillion in cash each year.

This mini-guide, distributed without cost by ATMmarketplace.com and MobilePaymentsToday.com, media properties of Networld Media Group, outlines five ways that the ATM industry can respond to mobile technology …